How to make it as a Composer...

I'm still early on the road to considering myself "a success", but one thing I've learned is get involved with the kind of people you want to work for as early as possible. In my case i'm interested in composing for film, games, and musicals. So I start by composing music for low key indie games and amateur films, and I write music for my old youth drama group as well.

One game has already led me to a slightly bigger game (still unpaid), and my work for my drama group helped me get in touch with a couple of serious writers who are looking for music for a small stage show.

Start small in the area that you're interested and work up, but get involved as much as you can, and be enthusiastic!

Sleep your way to the top!

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What? This isn't so far from the tits recommendation!

*throws more fat in the fire*

You need to make a decision for yourself - to define what "success" is to you.

Do you want to live comfortably, while making music? Do you want to have a big house and drive the coolest car, while taking any/every job you can regardless of artistic merit? Do you want to be well-known within a small community, but live modestly while making only the most creative and artistic music possible?

What's your SUCCESS? How do you measure it? There's any number of routes to take, varying on which direction you want to go...decide now, because soon it'll be too late.

With quality music and selling one-self efficiently and by making connections and everything else already mentioned above (except for.... well, you know), your chances should be greater.

But maybe another thing that might help is having a not-so-common name. Just thought I'd toss that out there.

One thing that I find hard to imagine is a person failing to succeed even though he did everything he possibly could have done to do so... I just can't seem to comprehend this being possible... I don't know why.

Be good.

Really good.

That's all....

You can always score film and TV. At my school, we are being trained to score for media.

same here, scoring for media is probably the only way to make a decent living with composing.

just writing music for the sake of writing music, good luck with that..

You NEED to do something. As above stated, yes, all is well. But you need to do something yourself. I am an undergraduate and I already did 3 piano concerts - they were smashing (except for the last one - I think it was a disaster!)

In my next piano concerto I will play modern music by composers on YC. Email me to have your work performed (I will consider it).

Go on! Try something! Get your friends and family togeather and do your own piano concerto. I ask R40 ($5) a grown-up and R30 ($4) for students.

Needless to say, you need to practice a minimum of at least 4 hours (your instrument goes here) to be good.

Good luck!

Right, I need to find myself a violin, spend 4 hours on it and then perform Prokofiev's 2nd...